12 January 2012 - The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation allocated a further USD500,000 (EUR393,000) to the US-based Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI), on top of the multi-million dollar award it made last year within its Tuberculosis (TB) Drug Accelerator program.

The original funding was aimed at helping identify new leads and new drug targets to be developed further in order to eventually produce new drugs to treat TB.

The extra funding will allow IDRI to boost its activities and encourage the pharmaceutical community to play more active role in tuberculosis drug discovery.

The additional funding will be used to expand a number of areas of work in early drug discovery including boosting their capacity to seek for anti-tubercular compounds, assessing of hit compounds and identify new drug targets.

(USD1 = EUR0.787)